Bloodie Bones Read online

  This provoked loud groans. The pallid man winked at his supporters. “And that’s the way a man of the old regime would talk, but times are changing, Drake. People aren’t prepared to obey laws that aren’t fair and just.”

  “Who’s the speech-monger?” Dan asked Singleton.

  “Travell, runs the village shop. Has a school there too, which sticks nicely in the parson’s craw. His Reverence doesn’t think it part of the natural order of things for ploughmen’s sons to be able to read.”

  Dan remembered the glimpse he had caught of the shopkeeper earlier, leaning over his counter. Talk like this in a London tavern or coffee house had been known to get a man arrested, but Dan had heard enough heated conversations in public houses to know not to take them too seriously. It was what a man did that mattered. Was Travell capable of matching action to words? The reference to trespass was interesting, but it was not clear whether Drake was actually accusing Travell of going on Lord Oldfield’s land. Travell neither denied nor admitted it, though there were a lot of knowing smirks, the most knowing of all from Singleton.

  “Laws will always seem unjust to those who want to break them,” Drake said. “By your argument, even murder might be justified.”

  “Who’s talking about murder?” cried Travell. “I’m talking about man’s inalienable rights – that means no one can take them away – to the game that roams wild and free. Since it belongs to no man, by what right does anyone stop us taking it?”

  “It seems that no one does stop you,” Drake said drily.

  The remark was aimed at the whole company, who showed their appreciation with raucous cheers, foot-stomping and tankard-drumming.

  “No, no, Drake, I’m talking about the principle of the thing,” Travell said.

  “Oh, it’s principles, is it? If the game was free and wild, maybe I’d grant you your principles. But it isn’t. It’s fed and bred by His Lordship, and therefore he owns it.”

  “And how does he feed and breed it? By stealing the land from under people’s noses. By shutting off the wood that has been open to the people of Barcombe as long as anyone can remember. Those are our paths under the trees, and we’ve walked them to gather food and fuel for generations. And now are the poorest families to starve in summer in the sight of plenty, and die of cold in winter while firewood lies rotting on the ground?”

  There were loud cries of agreement. Travell was in full liberty-spouting flow when a small boy arrived with the message that his dinner was ready and Mrs Travell said he was to come now. The alehouse revolutionary drained his glass and hurried out after his pupil.

  The rest made room for Dan and Singleton. Politics was forgotten in the more important matter of the fight. They relived the match blow-by-blow: the hits on Ben’s smeller, the damage to his sparklers, the pegs on the lug, and hits to the bread-basket. It was a source of great pride to them that one of their own – they had adopted Dan as a Barcombe man for the purpose – had stood up to Bold Ben when Stonyton’s champions fell.

  Drake had as much part in the talk as if his sympathy for Lord Oldfield’s rights had never been uttered. They respected him, and it was not hard to see why. He disapproved of their thieving ways and was not afraid to say so, but he would not sell them to the hangman for it, not even with Lord Oldfield’s reward dangling before him. A pity, thought Dan. In Drake’s line of work, out and about in the fields at all hours, there was probably not much he missed.

  The door latch rattled and a young man came in.

  “Evening, Abe,” they chorused.

  Abe Wicklow brought a whiff of the farmyard in with him. He was a good-looking lad, and he knew it. He had dandified his work boots, breeches and jacket with a spotted scarf, striped waistcoat, and a band of ribbon around his flat, round hat. A key and a seal hung from a watch chain beneath the waistcoat. When he sat down, he flicked back his jacket to show them off. He was dressed like a man who had been courting, which turned out to be the case.

  He took a long draught of beer, licked his lips, and announced with a grin that exposed teeth as big as old Joe’s, “I’ve just been up at the Hall to see Sal. She tells me they called in another doctor last night. He came all the way from London with that lawyer fellow.”

  “Did he bring Josh Castle back to life?” guffawed a squat, dark, hairy man who reeked of sweat, onions and muck. That was Pip Higgs, who worked with Drake on the common, where it was his job to impound stray or confiscated animals.

  “No, he’s still as dead as dead,” Abe shot back solemnly.

  “Bloody good thing too,” said gangly, squint-eyed Jem Cox, who had a habit of blowing his nose into his fingers and wiping them on his breeches. “Hope his broken bones rot in hell.”

  “Here’s to Bloodie Bones, I say,” cried Singleton.

  They all raised their glasses. Dan dutifully swallowed some beer. So far he had been careful to answer more questions than he asked, but he thought a bit of curiosity would not look out of place now.

  “Who’s Josh Castle?” he asked.

  “Lord Oldfield’s gamekeeper, found dead in the wood on Thursday with his head broke,” Singleton said.

  “And Bloodie Bones done for him!” Abe crowed.

  “What’s Bloodie Bones?”

  Answers came from every side.

  “He’s someone you don’t want to mess with, he is.”

  “You’ll hear him of a night, his bones rattling behind you.”

  “If you cheats or robs the poor, he’ll crush you bone by bone, like he done the old Lord.”

  “So this Bloodie Bones is a ghost, a buggybow who rides out to punish wrongdoers? Like Jack Straw.”

  Pip Higgs looked impressed. “You’ve heard of Jack, have you?”

  “He’s been known to appear at London riots,” Dan answered. “That is, a man dressed as him, in a straw mask.”

  “Bloodie Bones is no man in a straw mask. I see’d him.”

  They all turned and gazed at the speaker who sat on the edge of the group, casting forlorn glances at his empty glass. He had unkempt hair, a straggly beard, and grimy weather-beaten skin, and was bundled in a much larger man’s cast-off coat.

  “Garn! You’ve never seen anything, Girtin,” said a farm labourer in a smock, whose mouth was in a permanent miserable down-turn. Dan had forgotten his name.

  “Or seen it double!” quipped Abe. Everyone laughed.

  “But what did you see?” Dan asked.

  Girtin tapped his glass on the table. Dan took the hint and ordered him a refill.

  Though the others had teased the old man, they all leaned forward to listen. Everyone likes a ghost story, Dan thought. He did not have much time for tales as a rule, but last Halloween he had been at home and they had all sat around the fire: his wife Caroline, her sister Eleanor and their mother. Mrs Harper had a fund of old tales from her Yorkshire childhood. Her daughters knew them all, but Eleanor still shivered at the delightfully dreadful monsters and demons that stalked the pitch-black, storm-lashed moors.

  All that talk of spirits had made Caroline thirsty. Dan took no notice; he knew better than to suggest moderation and provoke a diatribe on spoiling her fun. He had been enjoying himself too much in any case, watching Eleanor’s eyes widen and her hands fly to her mouth, joining in her rueful laughter against herself. Caroline morosely emptied her bottle. The merriment had been at its loudest when she threw her cup into the fire. It smashed against the brickwork.

  “If I was dead, do you think I’d come back to haunt you, Dan? What do you think, Nell? Would I come back and find you still making eyes at my husband? You can have him. Oh, no, I forgot – you can’t, can you? Ask Dan. He knows all about the law. Tell her, Dan. You can’t marry your wife’s sister, so it’s no good wishing I was dead.” Her voice grew thick, tears and snot bubbled down her flushed cheeks. “I wish I was dead. I know that’s what you’d all like.” />
  Eleanor was white-faced. She could not look at Dan; he dared not look at her. All the pleasure they’d had in one another’s company was poisoned. She and Mrs Harper got Caroline to bed, Mrs Harper trying to smooth it all over: Caro didn’t know what she was saying; she didn’t mean it; it would all be forgotten in the morning…Dan sat by the hearth all night, while the flames died and the ashes cooled.

  Why hadn’t he seen the signs earlier? Why during their courtship had he found Caroline’s sudden rages, her bouts of unreason, so alluring? Because afterwards she would smile, and cajole, and caress; because she was beautiful; because all the men loved her, and not one of them had the sense to appreciate her sister’s quiet and tender beauty.

  Bitter for a man to dwell on his mistakes! Dan shook off the memory and attended to Girtin.

  “I was passing through the graveyard one night when I heard a terrible groaning and footsteps behind me. Like this.” Girtin clattered an empty tankard on the table. “I tell you, the hair stood up on my head. My flesh crept. My heart was going like this.” He pounded the table with his fingertips. “I didn’t want to turn round, but I knew I had to. And when I did, there he was.” He lowered his voice and they all leaned in closer. “As big as a house, and the dark blood streaming down him. I could see his heart inside his ribs, black and rotten. His eyes glowed like coals. His nails were a foot long. He clutched at me with his bony fingers, and when he opened his mouth, his breath was the stench of the charnel house. ‘Girtin,’ he said, with what a voice! My bowels turned to water at the sound of it. But it seemed to break a sort of spell. I turned and ran for my life. I didn’t stop until I was out of that graveyard and well away. When I looked back, I saw him sitting on a gravestone eating an owl, whole and raw, the gore spurting from his mouth.”

  It was a very satisfying tale, as the sigh that went up testified, and earned the man his drinks for the night.

  “He’ll be sitting on Castle’s grave before long,” Singleton said, when Buller had pulled more ales all round.

  Abe was the only one who had been impatient during Girtin’s story, and he wrested the attention back to himself. “Now the doctors have finished with him, he’s as good as lying in state up at the Hall.”

  “Lying in state? Like one of them?”

  “’Sright. Just like one of them. They say when Lord Adam saw the body brought into the gamekeeper’s cottage, he was so beside himself he smashed the place to bits.”

  “What did this Castle do to make himself so unpopular?” Dan asked.

  “Do?” said Buller, who was standing behind them, wiping his hands on his apron. “He was Lord Oldfield’s head gamekeeper and a bastard into the bargain, ready to do any dirty work.”

  “And there’ll soon be another one stepping up into his place,” Singleton said.

  They all nodded gloomily.

  “I’m not so sure.” Abe, that fount of knowledge, again. “Caleb Witt may want Josh’s place right enough, but that doesn’t mean he’ll get it. It’s rumoured in the servants’ hall that His Lordship is going to bring in a man from outside.”

  The spectre of the unknown keeper cast a morose mood over them. They devoted the next few minutes to thoughtful drinking.

  Drake, who had no cause to be troubled by keepers, said, “That’s me done. I’m off. Goodnight, lads.”

  His departure distracted the rest from their misery and the talk moved on to other matters. While Dan pretended to listen, and even threw in the odd remark, he mulled over what he had learned. It was not much, but the snippet about Caleb Witt was interesting. Witt had discovered the body, and it was often the case that the man who found the corpse was the one who had put it there. And he had a motive: he wanted Josh’s job.

  They said their goodnights and left Buller to lock up. As Dan settled down for the night in the forge, he heard Singleton shoot the bolts on the cottage door. Dan did not blame the blacksmith for his caution; he was still a stranger to them.

  *

  The next day was Sunday. “Pah!” grunted Singleton when his wife said she was off to church. Too used to his contempt to be affected by it, she calmly finished getting ready and left the men to eat up their bread and bacon.

  When Singleton had reached the teeth-picking stage, Dan announced his intention of exploring the heath.

  “I’ve nothing else to do,” Singleton said. “I’ll come with you.”

  This was a nuisance as Dan had been planning to take a look at Castle’s cottage, but he had no choice but to accept the offer. They left the village by the Stonyton Road, walking along the side of the church. The bells were silent and no sound issued forth: the parson must have started his sermon.

  After the last few straggling houses, the ground rose gently. On the right was open country, with the road to Bath running through it. On the left, beyond the heath, the dark mass of Barcombe Wood spread to the top of a shallow valley and down the other side. How much further it went Dan could not tell. On the side nearest Oldfield Hall the trees stopped at the edge of the park, where they had been felled to create an arc-shaped border around the rear lawn beyond the ornamental garden. There was a large, dark oval in the middle of the green, and what looked like cottages dotted around it. That seemed odd so close to the Hall.

  “Not cottages,” Singleton explained. “His Lordship’s improvements. That was the fish pond. Now it’s going to be a lake. They’ll be bringing water down from the Seven Springs at the head of the valley. It’s to have a bridge over it and an island in the middle with a castle on it, and what they call a temple on the far bank. He’s getting married soon, and he and his wife have a craze for such things. Lady Helen Burgh. She’s a dainty young lady, no denying it, but like all her kind. Maybe she’ll improve Lord Oldfield’s temper. Maybe she’ll make him worse.”

  They came to a spur of the wood which had encroached onto the heath, and turned left to follow the line of the wooden palings around the trees. The ground was smooth and level closer to the fence and would have been easier to walk on, but when Dan moved towards it, Singleton pulled him back.

  “They keep a particular eye on this part of the wood. Don’t go too close, else they’ll accuse you of going in.”

  “There’s no one about.”

  “Looks like it,” he agreed. “But the keepers are in there somewhere. Remember that, my lad. It’s transportation now for a man to walk in a forest his dad and granddad knew as well as their own gardens.”

  Further on they reached a patch of recently abandoned cultivated land at the edge of the wood. The soil was trampled and the plants broken or gone to seed, and weeds and nettles had sprung up in the midden. In the centre of the plot was a rectangle where a dwelling house once stood, the abandoned hearth with its ring of blackened stone a forlorn sight. Beams and bits of reed from the thatch still lay about, but the site had been stripped of anything of any use to other builders.

  “Has there been a fire here?” asked Dan.

  “No. This was Bob Budd’s house. Lord Adam threw him off the land. Wants to clear the area so it’s nice and tidy for his hunting friends. Bob had a family too. Didn’t mean nothing to His Lordship, though. Betty, Budd’s eldest, came to fetch Travell, and he fetched me, and we went to Drake to ask if he knew what was going on. Budd only had one cow and was poor enough to be allowed to graze the beast on the heath, but Drake had heard no complaints about him. He said perhaps Budd had tried to loose his pig into the forest without taking notice of the new rules. New rules!”

  Singleton spat in the direction of the fence and continued his story.

  *

  When Singleton, Drake and Travell reached Budd’s place, Lord Oldfield’s steward, Mudge, and his men were emptying the cottage while Castle stood looking on, his gun over his arm. Budd was loading whatever he could onto his cow. The little ones were bawling, Betty was trying to keep them quiet, and their mother was screaming at him
to stand his ground, but he just went on tying up the bundles.

  Travell demanded to know what was going on, and Mudge said they were evicting a trespasser.

  “On what grounds?” asked Travell.

  “On the grounds he shouldn’t be here,” Mudge said. “We’ve got an eviction notice.”

  “Signed by Lord Oldfield, the man doing the evicting,” Travell retorted.

  “If there’s a complaint against Budd, surely it can be dealt with the way we do on the heath, with a fine,” Drake said.

  “And you’d all put the money in,” Mudge said. “Anyway, it isn’t commons business. The forest belongs to His Lordship and he doesn’t want squatters on it no more.”

  “Budd’s father and grandfather lived here before him,” Travell said. “They have rights in the parish.”

  “Not unless they pay rent, which being squatters they don’t,” Mudge answered.

  The woman, her hopes raised by Travell’s defence, came up to Mudge and said, “You can’t throw us off. It’s not a hut, it’s a proper house, it has a chimney. That means we can stay.”

  “I don’t know where you got that from, and it makes no difference,” the steward answered. “The house shouldn’t be here, and neither should you.”

  “Your father came from out the parish, but no one thought of throwing him out,” Travell said.

  “My father was no squatter,” Mudge snapped. “He had a proper settlement here through marrying my mother, and kept himself by business too, not scavenging on another man’s land. Now get out of my way, before I make you.”

  Singleton stepped in front of the door, his fists clenched at his side. Drake moved up beside him. Travell followed and ducked behind them. The steward’s men looked uncertainly at Mudge, who waved his riding whip: Get on with it. There was some pushing and shoving, Travell hopping about without doing much, and it would have come to blows, but Budd said, “Leave it, lads. We’re going.”